Chapter 233
After finishing our bath, we continued upstream along the river.
If the mansion had been restored, it should be coming into view on the mountainside around now.
As we advanced along the riverbank, Melt kept watch on the forest side, I strained my eyes to see if the mansion would appear, and Seele checked the river itself and the opposite bank for monsters—our formation like that.
Then, it appeared.
Not on the mountainside—but on the opposite bank of the river.
A gigantic black wolf with a grotesquely twisted head, the same form as the “Boundary Breaker” I had once defeated as Selene.
“…What is that…? It’s scary… it looks really terrifying…”
“…Silent. Please return to your Shizuma form immediately and use 【Divine Eye】. I can’t read its information. That monster is likely… an abnormal existence.”
A monster whose identity Seele couldn’t discern even with her 【Appraisal Eye】.
In response, I reverted to my original form and examined the monstrous wolf glaring at us from across the river.
‘Devourer of Wanderers’
‘One who chews and swallows’
‘Eradicates those who should not exist here’
‘A mad beast cursed by its own purpose’
‘A product of malfunction’
The text wasn’t garbled, yet its meaning was vague—almost understandable, yet not quite.
The monster seemed to be observing our movements.
Once the check was done, I immediately returned to my Silent form and prepared for battle.
“We’ll crush it quickly. I checked it, but there was no information that seemed useful.”
“Understood. Silent, draw its attention from the front. I’ll aim for my ultimate attack.”
“I’ll restrain it with magic. There’s plenty of water here—I’ll freeze it and slow its movement.”
When something doesn’t make sense, you kill it first.
Using Silent’s overwhelming stats, I leapt across the river in a single bound and smashed my greatsword down at it the instant we clashed.
The blow landed squarely on the monster’s snout as it turned toward me, sending its massive body staggering backward.
Recognizing me as a threat, it wildly swung one of its enormous forelegs.
“Grahhh!”
I caught the leg—large enough to rival my own body—and shoved it back.
Sweeping my greatsword, I tore further into the limb, bathed in spraying blood, and thrust upward toward its head.
The blade pierced its neck.
Before I knew it, the monster’s hind legs had frozen solid, leaving it unable to flee. Seeing its escape cut off, I relentlessly drove my greatsword upward again and again, intent on killing it where it stood.
“Silent! Duck!”
Following Sheele’s sharp command, I immediately let go of my sword and crouched.
Something passed overhead.
Looking up, I saw what remained of the monster—its limbs intact, but its body completely erased.
…That must have been one hell of a strike. Sheele really went all out.
“Phew… the greatsword’s fine. Nice work, Sheele. Melt, great job holding it down too.”
“Wow… we’re really this strong now… We took down something that monstrous in no time… Silent, you’re still insanely strong…”
“Engaging it head-on, blocking its attacks, and trading blows—that’s not something one can normally do. Thanks to that, I was able to fully charge my technique before firing.”
Sheele said this while drinking a recovery potion after crossing the river.
Then, for some reason, her expression twisted—
“…Silent, you’re covered head to toe in blood. Please take another bath.”
“Geh—! …Melt, please.”
“Honestly… fine! I’ll get it ready!”
While preparations were underway, I checked the drop left behind by the monster we had just defeated.
It seems that monsters born from abnormalities, special individuals, and dungeon-lord–class beings all drop this.
‘Reminiscence: “The Primordial Demon King”’
‘Memories of somewhere not here hold no meaning’
‘Where does responsibility lie for one who tried to be human despite not being so?’
‘The memories of one who bears humanity’s hatred in order to fulfill that responsibility’
Once again, a large, glass-like chunk, accompanied by cryptic text that appears when stored in the menu.
It feels like the explanation means something, yet it looks nothing more than a decorative object.
How many of these do I have now?
Maybe I should take them all out and line them up sometime.
“The bath is ready!”
“Ah, got it!”
Well then, let’s clean this blood-soaked body…
The corpse disappears, so why does the blood stay…? I could’ve sworn it vanished before…
After that, continuing upstream, we finally spotted the mansion on the mountainside.
Despite the fact that it should have been completely obliterated—mountainside gouged out and the mansion blown to splinters in a massive explosion meant to kill Fulerica—the mansion stood there in the exact same place.
The mountain itself had returned to normal.
As expected, the dungeon master must be able to manipulate the terrain inside the dungeon quite freely.
“There really is a mansion inside the dungeon…”
“That’s what was destroyed before? If it’s restored now, then…”
“It’s definitely part of the dungeon. And if they went out of their way to prepare something like that…”
That mansion is almost certainly the dungeon master’s stronghold.
We climbed the steep cliffs and slopes toward it.
Exactly—there’s no way humans could build a mansion on terrain this sheer.
“Well then… we’re almost at the mansion. How about we try destroying it from here?”
“From here!?”
“I see… If the dungeon master is inside, you’re suggesting we attack it with everything we have and see if we can destroy the mansion along with them.”
“I’m going to revert to my original form and unleash a fully buffed strike. Sheele, I want your strongest attack too.”
“Understood. I’ll use a technique whose power increases with charge time… Melt, do you have something?”
“Fire magic, maybe? I can multiply it, control it, raise the temperature, and release it all at once.”
Try everything we can.
If it could be blown up before, then surely we can do it too.
Back then, the dungeon master probably wasn’t inside—the trap had already been set.
So what about now?
If we ambush it and destroy the mansion outright… surely even a dungeon master would die, right?
Returning to my original form, I equipped a greatsword focused purely on power and stacked support buffs on myself.
Sheele also raised her bow, and it was obvious even at a glance that so much mana was gathering that the very air around her was starting to swirl.
And Melt… the sparks of fire she created herself were swelling and expanding more and more above her head.
Each of us began charging in our own way, and I was certain that if we released these attacks simultaneously, the mansion would be completely blown away.
Melt’s enormous fireball, having gone past red and transformed into a color close to white, loomed overhead.
Even though the spell should have been suspended quite high in the air, I could feel a scorching sensation on my skin, as if it were slowly burning me.
The arrow nocked on Sheele’s bow seeped a pitch-black color like deep darkness, radiating an ominous aura around it.
This wasn’t the effect seen when charging to the maximum in the game—it was a color I had never seen before.
…Maybe there really is no such thing as a limit in this world.
As for me, I finished applying all my buffs, power surging through my entire body as I raised my greatsword.
“Everyone, our target is that mansion. Let’s go…!”
Our all-out attacks erupted.
“‘Gale Break’!”
“Big fire! Go—!”
“‘Ultimate Shot: Starlit Ages’!”
A gigantic fireball, an enormous blade of wind, and an arrow like a beam of black light all rushed toward the mansion.
They struck it simultaneously, and a shockwave tore through the area, shaking the entire mountain.
“…This is one of those moments where there’s a line you’re not supposed to say, right?”
The mansion was engulfed in massive clouds of smoke.
Dust from the crumbling mountain rose with it, to the point that even the sunlight shining on us was completely obscured.
“Yes… because that would raise a flag,”
Sheele replied.
Perhaps because she understood that, Sheele carefully avoided saying those words as she watched the smoke-covered mansion.
But—
“Did we get it!? After an attack like that, there’s no way it survived!”
Melt had perfectly and flawlessly raised the flag…!
When the smoke cleared, a completely unscathed mansion stood there—though it probably wasn’t really Melt’s fault.
Still, it gave me a solid hypothesis.
“…In other words, dungeons aren’t meant to be destroyed by external impacts—they’re entities completely detached from physical laws. So when it was destroyed last time, it must have been because the dungeon master set it up that way, or had already made some kind of agreement with humans allowing it to be destroyed. That settles it. The dungeon master here is someone who can make agreements with humans—or at least negotiate with them.”
“That interpretation makes sense… though we may have completely antagonized them with that attack,”
Sheele said.
“Whaaat!? Why didn’t it break!? That spell has actually blown away a mountain before!”
“Huh!? Melt, you’ve done that!?”
“…Only once, okay? When I was living in the forest, I attacked a mountain by the sea one time…”
Apparently, if Melt focuses purely on destructive power, she can use magic comparable to our MMO-derived skills.
That’s honestly terrifying…! If she trains more, she could get even stronger!
“Alright. Let’s go to the mansion. There might be traps, so I’ll switch back to Silent’s form.”
“Yes… just in case, please take some buff potions as a precaution.”
“Traps, huh… scary… like pitfall traps?”
If only it were something as simple as pitfall traps…
That explosion could happen again, after all—we need to be careful.
“Ah, actually, I’ll stay like this. With [Divine Eye], I can spot traps.”
“Right, you can also read terrain information, can’t you?”
After thoroughly checking for safety with our own eyes, we finally reached the front of the mansion.
Last time, it exploded almost immediately, so we couldn’t observe it properly—but this time we could take a good look.
At a glance, it was a Western-style mansion at the same level of civilization as what we see in this world.
Even if the dungeon master comes from another world or another dimension, do they build structures like this to match the local world?
“…Based on what I see with [Divine Eye], there are no traps anywhere. But the name of the mansion is—”
‘The Mansion of Contradictions and Mysteries’
‘A base created by the Dungeon Master “Lulazareth”’
‘All acts of destruction by any being are forbidden, but this restriction can be lifted if certain conditions are met’
‘An extremely anomalous existence’
“Looks like combat isn’t possible inside this mansion.”
“So it’s another dungeon with special gimmicks.”
“We can’t fight!? We’ll just get beaten up one-sidedly!”
“No, I think the other side is the same. …Let’s go in.”
It seems this dungeon, too, is cleared under special conditions.
…We’d better start thinking about possible loopholes.